Dr Lizzy Attree, who has served as Director of the Caine Prize for African Writing as a part-time consultant for seven years, is leaving the organisation. The Board of Trustees has paid tribute to the work Lizzy has done throughout her tenure, and wishes her well with the Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize and her other projects. The Board is grateful for Lizzy’s commitment and contributions to the continued growth of the Caine Prize, which is recognised as a leading literary award. An announcement regarding the future administration of the Prize will follow in due course.

The Caine Prize for African Writing has announced the five judges for the 2018 Prize. Georgetown University’s nomination to the panel, Dinaw Mengestu, will serve as the Chair of judges. An award winning Ethiopian-American novelist and writer, Dinaw is the former Chair in Poetry at the Lannan Foundation at Georgetown. He will be joined by: Henrietta Rose-Innes, South African author and winner of the 2008 Caine Prize; Lola Shoneyin, award winning author and Director of the Ake Arts and Books Festival; Alain Mabanckou, world-renowned writer and Professor of Literature at UCLA; and Ahmed Rajab, a Zanzibar-born international journalist, political analyst and essayist.

Dr Delia Jarrett-Macauley has been included in the 2018 Powerlist, which honours the most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the UK. Her inclusion recognises the significance of her appointment as the first African Chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing. The Powerlist is published annually by Powerful Media, and was this year announced at an “influencers dinner” at Draper’s Hall, London.

Bushra al-Fadil has won the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for his short story entitled “The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away”, translated by Max Shmookler, with support from Najlaa Osman Eltom published in The Book of Khartoum - A City in Short Fiction (Comma Press, UK. 2016). The Chair of Judges, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, announced Bushra al-Fadil as the winner of the £10,000 prize at an award dinner this evening (Monday, 3 July) held for the first time in Senate House, London, in partnership with SOAS as part of their centenary celebrations. As a translated story, the prize money will be split – with £7,000 going to Bushra and £3,000 to the translator, Max Shmookler.

The five-writer shortlist for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced by Chair of judges, award winning author, poet and editor, Nii Ayikwei Parkes. The list includes a former Caine Prize shortistee and features a story translated form Arabic for the second time in the 18 year history of the Prize.

Nii Parkes said the shortlist ‘reveals the depth and strength of short story writing from Africa and its diaspora.’

The fifteenth annual Caine Prize workshop is being held in Tanzania for the first time, and the 2017 anthology of short stories, 12 of which are written during the workshop, will be co-published by Tanzanian Company Mkuki na Nyota, in partnership with New Internationalist - who provide a print-ready pdf to African co-publishers free of charge. Mkuki Bgoya has been commissioned to design the cover of the anthology, which in 2017 will be co-published in 16 African countries, including Rwanda for the first time, with Huza Press. In addition the Redsea Cultural Foundation will co-publish the anthology in Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE.

In its eighteenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing has received 148 qualifying short stories from 22 African countries, bringing the total number of eligible submissions since the inception of the Prize to over 1,600 from 47 African countries.

The 2017 judges, who were announced at the end of last year, will meet in mid May to decide on the 5 shortlisted stories. Each shortlisted writer will be awarded £500, with the eventual winner awarded a £10,000 prize.

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